A True Haunting

Owning a piece of land in Florida can become completely a frightening adventure when you start discovering things that just should not be. In 1997, I acquired a home and a piece of land in Florida. There was a little over an acre of land, and a small two bedroom home on the real estate. There was also an old one horse stall left standing on the property from when previous owners had horses. The land required a lot of landscaping, and the stall became a refurbished yard shed with vinyl siding, windows, and cement floor. That was not the true interesting part of this property. After living there for a while, I found out that this small house was on top of a very old Indian burial ground. This is the fascinating story of what led me to that discovery.

This story actually started when my landscape partner and I were discussing what we were going to do first to the property before I moved into the new place. It was about midnight, and we were having a quick beer while talking, listening to some music and trying to figure out how to turn an old pasture into a nicely groomed yard. All of a sudden Steve jumped back and screamed”holy Sh**” as he tripped and the container of beer went flying like a hand grenade into the air and exploded on a huge rock. “Did you see that?” As he pointed to the back yard. I saw basically nothing, but we opted to chill a little and just watch and see what happened. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw what he saw, and it definitely gave me one heck of a startle. There in the distance was a white image that just seemed to be standing there. When the moon would slide out from behind a cloud you could make out the image.

This figure was something that I had talked about as a kid, but never honestly thought any more about it as I grew up and moved on. There in the fringe shadows was an older lady, probably a grandmother in a white house coat, long curly gray hair waving in the breeze while she held the hand of a little girl. They both just seemed to be starring at us. IT was definitely a weird experience, and the hair on our arms were truly standing at attention, and that walking fingers up your spine, well it had done the hundred yard dash a few times before the images were gone.

I was married, and my wife Zineb and I moved in the house in June, with our three dogs and one cat. At first things appeared perfectly ok, but every now and then the dogs would start barking like mad around midnight. Of course, getting up at 4am to go do landscaping made it a case where I would get up, grumble, and just let the dogs out without paying any attention. Boy would I get a wide awakening. It first started with noises like someone scraping a giant box across the floor. Then that noise was interrupted with a thump now and then. The true shock was when all three dogs came running into the bedroom and jumped on the bed between my wife and I. They never came in the room, nor did they like to be crowded with us. It goes without saying it was not our favorite scene either. Let’s face it, two cocker spaniels and a full size chow, German Sheppard mix does not leave much room for two adults on a queen size bed.

Finally after that, the door was shut to the bedroom, and the dogs were let out just before we went to bed. The dilemma was not the dogs though. That night there was that same scraping across the floor and the thumps now and then. IT seemed to get a lot cooler in the bedroom all of a sudden. Then I could not believe my eyes. There at the door was that old woman and little girl staring at us like we were not supposed to be there!!Well, umm, what do you do? Of course, nudge the wife, and see if she is awake. The squeezing of my arm plainly said yes. Okay, this is too much. Time to get up and do something. What the He^^ do you do with non-existent people who are in your bedroom? Ok, yell at the peak of your lungs to get out…IT worked. Now I do not know about you, but that is not what I want to wake up to at midnight. This was just a wee bit more than what I bargained for when I bought the place. Oh by the way, the next day the neighbors complained about the dogs going wild and barking like never before at the door. The neighbors wanted to know why we never let them in. The time was? Yes it was somewhere around midnight.

Well, needless to say, my wife was not a happy person about the free tenants that we had. Shortly after we were having one heck of a yard sale, and performing projects to relocate. There were other instances of moved items in the house and weird noises, but nothing as big as that night. When I resolved to find out more about this piece of property, I found out from my neighbors who had lived there many years that my property was on an old burial ground, and that my property never seemed to keep owners long. I wonder why. No actually, it was quite apparent, and I was not about to make my wife stay there any longer if she did not want to.